In Cottbus, a town 120 km away from Berlin, an International Film Festival is held every year. Cottbus hosted a film festival in 1991 for the first time, which became a leading film forum of Eastern Europe very soon.

Simultaneously with festival film-sections, there is an international platform "Connecting Cottbus" functioning, which plays an important role in establishing relations between cinema professionals of different countries and making co-productions.

In 2015, the festival celebrated its 25th anniversary and it was attended by 20.000 people from 40 countries of the world. One of the leading media publishing "Variety" mentioned Cottbus Film Festival as a "must-attend international event" and named it among world's "50 unmissable film festivals".

The festival includes several competition sections presenting feature films, short films and "U-18" - youth films. In addition to the official jury, festival is regularly attended by FIPRESCI and Ecumenical juries.

Main Competition Program presents 12 films, including Giorgi Ovashvili's "Khibula". As for the short feature competition, it also includes Georgian film - "8 Minutes" by Giorgi Gogichaishvili and Davit Abramishvili.

The sun stops shining and 8 minutes is the exact time a sunlight needs to reach the earth. Just like the entire world, Tbilisi is in a panic too. The film illustrates the chaos, misunderstanding and desperation which describes the last 8 minutes of human history, - that's an apocalyptic film synopsis. It is to remember that "8 Minutes" made it to the final among 10 films at Manhattan Short Film Festival which means that it automatically obtained the right to take part at Oscars, in 2018.

As for the Cottbus Film Festival Focus, this year, there's Vietnam, meaning Vietnamese migrants, how they move with their families to central Europe: Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic. Hoping for finding a job, left vis-à-vis xenophobic surroundings and racism, they end up their dreams with deportation. Films presented in documentary and essayistic genre, tell stories developed in different periods of time.

Besides, there will be a panel-discussion held in industrial part of the festival, which our festival representative Ana Chkonia will take part in. First, this panel-discussion was held at the 7th Odessa film festival and continued at Cottbus Festival. It involves 6 countries of Eastern Partnership: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ukraine and Belorussia. These countries' festival representatives will talk about how a festival can, with the films presented, hold a dialogue about the important and tabooed matters of the civil society and how the economic and political conditions of the country influence a festival life.